C3PO #1 Answers THE FORCE AWAKENS’ Biggest Question

C3PO #1 Answers THE FORCE AWAKENS’ Biggest Question

…how DID C3PO get that red left arm? We certainly find out, in C3PO – THE PHANTOM LIMB!

I’ll admit, I approached this comic with some hesitance. You… you have to understand… I’m as bigger Star Wars fan than most people can tolerate… but I didn’t think for one second I’d ever read a thirty-page comic about C3PO…

…let alone really enjoy it for fifteen minutes. Let’s jump right in. The story begins with an escape pod crash landing on a strange planet. Six droids walk out of the wreckage and begin a dangerous journey…

There’s C3PO, of course, protocol droid of the Rebellion-turned-Republic-turned-Resistance. He’s joined by VL44, a maintenance droid, PZ99, a Jakku-veteran security droid, CO34, a construction droid, and 2MED2, a classic Hoth-style medical droid. There is also Omri, a First Order protocol droid revealed to be their prisoner– and harboring the secret location of a captured Admiral Ackbar. Nevertheless, the group bands together to survive this brave new world in order to activate a distress beacon in a crashed First Order TIE Fighter. It’s their only hope of every being rescued, let alone discovered by a friendly and familiar presence.

Omri and Threepio, two loftier-thinking protocol droids than their fellow automatons, engage in a civil and philosophical discussion about the significance of their memories. Who were they before they were now? What loyalty could they ever have to a master, a person that controls their actions and dictates what they can remember on a whim? The debate endures, but the group does not. They fall one by one. Giant spiders. Giant insects. Giant shark thing. Each droid, in their own way sacrificing themselves so the others could go on. And in case you wanted to skip ahead and find out… C3PO ends up losing his arm to a swamp monster to a giant shark thing. It’s a thing that’s at least half-shark, half-octopus, and half rosebush or whatever passes for all three in The Galaxy.

Pretty dramatic, don’t you think? And as much action as Threepio has probably seen since he was shot into pieces on Cloud City. As they travel, we’re hit with a bit of a bomb, that despite the major memory wipe he recieved at the end of Revenge of the Sith, C3PO has vague “phantom” memories of his past adventures, something that doesn’t distress too him much but mortifies Omri.

Soon, only the two of them are left, as they finally cross a desert to the crashed TIE Fighter. And just when you thought this planet’s ecological disasters had put them through enough, it starts to rain. Acid rain. They find a brief reprieve in the shade of the TIE’s wing panels, until Omri, moved by C3PO’s perseverance and selfless concern for those around him, makes the ultimate sacrifice. He marches into the downpour, a sure enough death sentence even for an armor-plated droid, and activates the distress beacon. C3PO is rescued by a crew of rebels in a landing craft, led by none other than Poe Dameron. But Threepio survives. With a souvenir too, no less– the red-paint-primed arm of Omri to replace that which he lost.

C3PO gets his own comic and dodges danger at every turn. He seems to be made to suffer… it’s his lot in life. But you won’t suffer reading this, I guarantee it!